If you read this blog regularly, you know that I have many flaws. In fact, I list them annually. The 2015 list is 35 items long.

But here’s something in which I excel:

I say these three sentences often. I probably say each one of them more than once a day.

I’m sorry.

I was wrong.

I don’t know.

Perhaps it’s because I’m so flawed that I find it so easy to say these three sentences. A person who blunders as often as I do relies on these three sentences to get through the day.

But there is no clearer sign to me that someone is a confident, accomplished, self-possessed person than his or her ability to say these three sentences often and without reservation.

Sadly, a lot of people have a hard time with these three sentences. My life often seems filled with people who can’t say them or only say them disingenuously.

I’ll never understand it. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be to go through life having to be right or thinking that you’re always right or needing to give off the illusion that you’re always right when everyone around you knows it’s not true.